In many ways, Kingston Station is an inferior version of Gaslight, which I reviewed in this space this past week. Both feature steak frites and onion soup gratinée, white tile, and a barrage of reflected noise. This apparently was not intentional: Gaslight is intended to evoke a French brasserie. Kingston Station uses the tile to evoke a subway station. And even though Kingston Station is billed as a bistro, it also serves some “fake” Chinese food, perhaps a nod to Peking Tom’s, the last restaurant in this space. I’m all for fake Chinese food, but not a block from Chinatown.

In any case, Kingston Station had such a successful bar scene on my Friday-night visit, it’s a wonder they have restaurant tables at all. That, plus smooth walls, large windows on the bar side, white wall tiles, and hardwood floors, makes it extremely loud. How loud, you ask? It’s so loud you can barely see or taste. It’s so loud it cleans your jewelry while you dine. It’s so loud they don’t need plasma TVs. It’s so loud . . . [it drowned out the rest of this sentence, even in print].

There we were amidst the noise, though, enjoying some familiar food done well. That’s important, since you’ll want to line your stomach before sampling the newly legal Kübler absinthe featured at the bar. I didn’t see Van Gogh or Edgar Allan Poe hanging out, but maybe they were home watching the basketball game.

My favorite appetizer of the evening, seared-tuna Niçoise salad ($16), was actually meant to be a dinner, and it fed several of us. You get about twice the usual seared sushi-grade tuna, plus lots of field greens, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, garlicky marinated potatoes, slices of egg, seeded olives, and green beans. Of the Chinese holdovers, go with the pork ribs ah so ($10). It’s six ribs stacked like Lincoln logs, not overdone, with a solid drippy sweet chili sauce and a side salad of red cabbage that was sweet but refreshing. Chicken wings ($8) are coated with the same sauce; it’s sweet and hot like Thai “squid sauce,” with a dip of Chinese-style mustard. Though the sauce is fine, this fake Chinese food is better if you order it the way it came in the ’60s, when it had two dipping options: sweet-and-sour and mustard.

Speaking of squid, the calamari ($11) is a little bready but crisp and tasty, though not everyone will like the dip of hotted-up salad dressing. Onion soup gratinée ($7) comes in a small crock and is too salty, but it has real onion flavor and lots of gooey cheese. Steak salad ($16), marinated steak pieces on a lot of field greens, is another light dinner.

REVIEW: BONCHON | August 10, 2012 What am I doing in this basement in Harvard Square, reviewing the second location of a multi-national franchise chain?

REVIEW: CARMELINA'S | July 25, 2012 After a good run with "Italian tapas" under the name Damiano (a play on the given name of chef-owner Damien "Domenic" DiPaola), this space has been rechristened as Carmelina's — after the chef's mother and his first restaurant, opened when he was an undergraduate in Western Mass — and the menu reconfigured to feature more entrées.

REVIEW: TONIC | July 06, 2012 Bad restaurant idea number 16: let's do a neighborhood bar-bistro where there already is one.

REVIEW: HAPPY’S BAR AND KITCHEN | June 20, 2012 In a year of bad restaurant ideas, one of the better bets is to have a successful fancy-food chef try a downscale restaurant.